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- Works on all different floor types – wood, tile, carpet, vinyl
- Easily schedule daily cleanings or just push a button for spot clean or instant multi-room cleaning
- Two High-Performance Filters reduce dust and allergens
- Blade and brush system offers the best performance on any floor type and picks up tough pet hair
- Strongest suction available in a robot vacuum
- Easily schedule daily cleanings or just push a button for spot clean or instant multi-room cleaning
Neato XV Signature Pro Pet & Allergy Robot Vacuum Cleaner – A smart, powerful robot vacuum Advanced laser guided navigation means the XV Signature Pro goes automatically from room to room, cleaning close to edges, in corners, and carefully around furniture. Its Smart Sensor technology automatically detects and avoids stairs, and doesn’t bump into furniture like other robots do. It returns to the charge base and resumes where it left off! No other robot is this smart.
The technology is a revolutionary system developed by Neato Robotics that combines laser vision with mapping. The robot uses a laser and sensors to see its surroundings an
Neato vs. Roomba vs. Hom-Bot,
Here is my comparison review of the Neato Signature Pro, iRobot Roomba 780, and the LG Hom-Bot Square. I bought and tested all three, and ended up keeping the Neato and returned the other two. Here are the details of our comparison and review of each model:
iRobot Roomba 780 – It is one of the dumber vacuum robots on the market, because it lacks the more advanced navigation abilities that competitors have, while costing more than some of them. It uses brute force blind navigation of bouncing around in a room randomly until it cleans the whole room. Watching it running around like a chicken with its head cut off can really try your patience. You can’t help but think if it was smarter in how it navigated, it would get the job done much quicker and more efficiently. It also went over many areas multiple times because it has no memory of where it’s been (iRobot says these’s an algorithm to its randomness, but you can’t tell by observing it). It doesn’t get caught up by power cables or get stuck on raised surfaces too easily, but it will get stuck at some point if your home isn’t totally flat. Its little corner spinning brush helps it clean corners pretty well, and its overall cleaning power seems fine. It does bump into things though–that’s part of its navigation method.
One really disappointing aspect of the Roomba is it’s lack of ability to resume cleaning where it left off. It can return to base for charging battery or after it finishes cleaning, but it cannot continue cleaning after charging the battery if it had to return to base to charge before the cleaning was finished. The other two models are able to finish charging and then navigate back to where it left off and then continue.
The Virtual Wall Lighthouse is iRobot’s attempt to catch up to competitors, but it’s not that useful because the Roomba isn’t capable of going home to charge and then return to where it left off, and the Virtual Wall/Lighthouse only allows 25 minutes before it stops and lets the Roomba out of the room. What if you have a big room? The way the Roomba bounces around like an idiot takes much longer than 25 minutes to clean a large room.
For the price you pay, the Roomba 780 should be far smarter and more advanced in every way, but it’s essentially a dated technology from the previous century that iRobot overcharges for.
LG Hom-Bot Square – On paper and in video demonstrations, the Hom-Bot Square seemed like it would do the job. We really wanted it to be “the one,” but despite its pretty looks and great specs on paper, it ended up being a big disappointment.
It turned out that smarter isn’t necessarily better. I had already read other reviews mentioning this, but I wanted to be sure, just in case our house and furniture is laid out more efficiently for the Hom-Bot. But other reviewers were right–it got stuck constantly (15 times in one room) and would also turn itself off for no reason. My wife and I are very tidy and we don’t have children or pets, nor do we have clutter in our house. It should have been easy for Hom-Bot, but it couldn’t even clean one room properly. Protruding corners were especially problematic for Hom-Bot–it kept getting stuck, and even if we moved it, it would go back to the same corner and get stuck over and over. When it’s not getting stuck, it seemed to be pretty smart and efficient, but what’s the point if you have to constantly babysit it? You might as well vacuum clean yourself.
We did like the two corner spinning brushes though–it is the best solution we’ve seen thus far (versus just one corner brush on the Roomba 780). We also liked how quiet it was, and how well designed the internal/removable parts were. But none of that matters when it couldn’t even navigate around corners.
In the end, the other reviewers were right. Even though the iRobot Roomba series is a lot dumber, it at least got the job done and didn’t get stuck all the time. it might take its sweet time going over the same areas over and over, but it eventually gets the job done and you don’t have to babysit it as much. We were unsatisfied with both the Hom-Bot and the Roomba, and we were about to give up on robot vacuums altogether, when I decided to give the Neato a shot.
Neato Signature Pro – Third time’s the charm, as they say. We were ready to give up on robot vacuum cleaners and just stick to normal ones, but I wanted to leave no stone unturned, so we bought the Neato Signature Pro and tested it out. We’re so glad we did.
The Neato’s navigation is superior than the other two by far, because it uses a 360 degree scanning approach that allows it to see the entire room’s layout and updates its internal memory/image of the room’s layout constantly. It can sense when someone walks near it., or moved an object in or out of the room, and then adjust its navigation accordingly. It is also able to go home to recharge when low on…
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|Still won’t clean the whole area, but there’s hope,
I couldn’t find any reviews anywhere for this model when I purchased it and am surprised there still isn’t a single review showing up on Amazon.
Info in the box – There isn’t any information specific to this model on the box, in the paper manual, or on the disk. No mention of how long it runs on a single charge or about the suction compared to other models. It does mention that charging time is 2-3 hours.
Charging Station Placement – As with the other models, you need to place the charging station along a wall 3 feet from corners or obstacles on either side and the area 3 feet in front of the charger should be clear of obstacles. Luckily, I found a place like that, but there are probably lots of people who can’t.
Menu – The menu is extremely simple to use. It asks about the language you’d prefer, asks you to set the time, and then you can schedule up to one cleaning time for each day of the week. You can also set it to spot clean a 4 x 6 area.
Testing Area – I tested it out on my very dusty dark colored hard wood floors. All of my furniture is high enough off the floor for the Neato to scoot under. We have two wool rugs in the area to be cleaned. The dining chairs were put up on the table to make it easier for the Neato to get under the table.
Speed – It’s definitely not fast, but at least it does use a well defined pattern instead of going over the same spot again and again. It takes 15 minutes to clean my large dining room.
Sound – It has a rather throaty low pitched sound that I don’t find annoying. The volume is at a reasonable level for a vacuum cleaner. TV can be watched while it’s running if you turn the volume up a bit. It didn’t scare the dog much.
Run Time – When started from it’s base, it will run for 20 minutes then return to charge. Once it’s charged, it will to back to where it left off and clean for another 20 minutes then repeat this one more time. If it hasn’t finished after 3 sessions, it just goes back to the base and it’s done. No where in the literature does it say it runs for 20 minutes, but I’ve timed it through several rounds and it’s always the same. It charged overnight and still only ran 20 minutes. I’m not positive, but I thought I read somewhere that other Neato models ran 90 minutes at a time.
Area Covered – I’m disappointed that it can’t complete my dining room, kitchen, and family room in 3 charges. My rooms are large, but I would expect it to be able to do at least 1500 sq ft. What this means for me is that it can’t automatically clean this area. I’ll have to pick it up off the charger and carry it to the areas it doesn’t normally reach, take it back to charge, and then carry it back to finish up.
Navigation – Overall, navigation is good but it’s far from perfect. In 2 days of messing with it, we’ve had the following issues: it got lost in a spot of bright sunlight once, it failed to find it’s base once (found it 5 times), it bashed into a few things while neatly going around others, it got stuck under the entertainment center (I suspect the legs confused it) a few times, it didn’t clean an odd shaped area of the room (sort of an L shape going off to a short hall), it tried to climb up the china cabinet, and it left good sized circles of dust around some pieces of furniture. The ceiling in the rooms we ran it in are 15 ft high and that didn’t seem to cause it any trouble.
Dust Bin – Our wool rug under the dining table sheds horribly. The dust bin filled up completely several times, but only once did it notify us that it needed to be emptied. Once the bin is full of fuzz, it starts jamming the intake. Once it starts filling up, the Neato starts barfing up a pile of fuzz every time it goes over an obstacle. The edges of my rugs and the areas where it drove over the flat part of the chair legs (flat metal piece lies on the floor) are surrounded by piles of fuzz.
Suction/Exhaust – Suction seems reasonable, but not stellar. Maybe I’m being unfair comparing it to my Dyson canister vac, but it’s not remotely in the same league for suction. Several times I noticed it blowing dust from uncleaned to previously cleaned areas.
Things I still haven’t tried:
Tile
Kitchen/food messes
Carpet
Drops
We’ve never had a robot vac before, so can’t really compare it to others. So far I’m really disappointed that the vac won’t be able to clean this section of the house on it’s own (it doesn’t cover enough area), that it misses dust along the walls in places, that it leaves big dust rings around furniture, and that it barfs up fuzz around the rugs and anything it drives over.
I’ll update my review when I’ve had a chance to check out more, but figured since there are ZERO reviews available, people might want info ASAP.
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5/7/2013
I eventually gave up on the…
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